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Administrative history

Founded by health and safety campaigner Nancy Tait (1920-2009), the Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (OEDA) started out as the world’s first asbestos action group, the Society for the Prevention of Asbestosis and Industrial Diseases (SPAID).

SPAID was registered as a charity in November 1978, initially operating from Nancy Tait’s home in Enfield, North London. Following a successful funding bid to the Greater London Council, the charity occupied office space in Cuffley, North London, from October 1983. Funding continued for nearly 20 years. In 1988 SPAID added an electron microscope laboratory to its services, the EM Research Unit, which was equipped with the latest technology to detect asbestos fibres in lung tissue. The EM Unit occupied a ground floor suite at Mitre House, Enfield, which also provided additional office space. In 1995 the organisation’s two offices were consolidated at Mitre House.

At the instigation of the organisation's main funding body, SPAID underwent a management review by the Charities Effectiveness Review Trust during 1991. One outcome of the reviewing process was the decision to appoint a salaried executive director and to bring the organisation in line with the funding body’s standards for business procedures. A working party was set up in 1992, with the result that OEDA was formally incorporated at the end of September 1993 and registered as a charity in January 1994. At that stage OEDA was projected to take over as SPAID’s successor organisation from April 1994. In effect the two bodies existed in tandem for over two years. During the transition an executive director was appointed but remained in office for three months only, after which management reverted to previous arrangements. SPAID officially became OEDA in January 1996. As part of the name change, the organisation's mission broadened out to encompass occupational and environmental health issues that were not related to asbestos more explicitly than before.

From 2000 to 2002, when a new legislative body known as the Greater London Authority (GLA) was established, OEDA received GLA funding. OEDA's subsequent applications to GLA were unsuccessful. OEDA was dissolved as a registered company in April 2009, two months after Nancy Tait's death, and finally removed from the register of charities on 9 May 2010.

Original proposals for the name of the charity included 'Trust for Asbestos Welfare Research and Control' (TAWRC) and 'Asbestos Induced Diseases Society' (AIDS). Proposals for the name of the successor organisation OEDA included 'Occupational Diseases Association' (ODA), 'Industrial Diseases of the Environment Association' (IDEA) and 'Investigation of Industrial Diseases of the Environment Association' (IIDEA).

The OEDA logo was designed by Matt Wilson. The contact with the designer was through then OEDA chairman Mr Laurie Horam.

SPAID was registered as a charity on 30 November 1978 (Registered Charity 276995) and removed from the register on 11 January 2000. OEDA was registered as a charity on 6 January 1994 (Registered Charity 1031036) and removed from the register on 9 May 2010. OEDA had previously been incorporated as a private limited company by guarantee without share capital use of 'Limited' exemption (Company Number 02864612, from 21 October 1993) and was formally dissolved on 14 April 2009. Known addresses for the organisation were 6A Station Road, Cuffley; Mitre House, 66 Abbey Road, Enfield; and Nancy Tait's home at 38 Drapers Road, Enfield.

Name of creator

Biographical history

Michael O'Connor studied at Brooklyn College and New York Law School. He was a Vice President and Associate General Counsel of Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, during the bank's legal proceedings against international asbestos giant Turner & Newall plc (T&N), 1987-1997.

Recognising the value of corporate documents uncovered during the discovery process of the bank's lawsuit against T&N, O'Connor began sending copies of key content from the T&N archive to victim support groups, the media, lawyers, doctors, and historians. In March 1995 O'Connor was presented with a Freedom of Information Award for his efforts to supply British victims of asbestos-related diseases with documents supporting their compensation claims.

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Administrative history

Turner & Newall (T&N) was a leading manufacturing business based in Manchester, UK. The company was one of the first to industrialise asbestos. Its demise in 2001 left an aftermath of asbestos litigation.

The business originated with Turner Brothers, founded in Rochdale in 1871 to manufacture cotton-cloth-based packaging. In 1920 Turner Brothers merged with the Washington Chemical Company, Newalls Insulation Company, and J W Roberts to become Turner & Newall. That year T&N also became listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Subsequently the company acquired Bells' United Asbestos Companies and several asbestos insulation companies in the UK, among others operating a plant in Armley, West Yorkshire, and an asbestos mine in Bulembu, Swaziland, Southern Africa. After World War II T&N diversified into components for the automotive industry (including gaskets). In 1953 it also bought Porters Cement Industries Ltd, a major producer of chrysotile asbestos products based in Salisbury and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (at the time: Southern Rhodesia).

In 1998 T&N was acquired by Federal Mogul, which as a result of a surge of asbestos-related personal injury claims filed for Chapter 11 protection. In the UK the business went into administration in October 2001, leaving a pension fund deficit estimated at £400 million.

Parts of T&N continue trading. Porters Cement Industries Ltd, for instance, which had been renamed Turnall Fibre Cement Ltd after becoming part of T&N in 1952, continues to operate as an independent company in Zimbabwe, mainly producing asbestos cement sheets and pipes.

The T&N Subfund of the Federal Mogul Asbestos Trust was organised to process, liquidate, and pay all valid Asbestos Trust claims for which T&N entities have legal responsibility. The Trust was created 27 December 2007 as a result of the confirmation of The Federal-Mogul Chapter 11 Joint Plan of Reorganization. For claimants whose principal exposure to asbestos was in the UK or one of several other non-US countries, a UK Asbestos Trust was established to provide for the payment of asbestos claims.

Name of creator

Biographical history

On 30 June 1968 Nancy Tait lost her husband to “a puzzling illness” which subsequently turned out to be pleural mesothelioma, a cancer associated with asbestos exposure. Available information on the disease and on how it was contracted did not convince her. She embarked on an extended fact-finding mission that grew into a research and advocacy agenda which would occupy her for four decades.

Nancy Tait was born Nancy Clark on 12 February 1920 in Enfield, north London, the daughter of William and Annie Clark. Her father was a compositor. On completing her secondary education at Enfield County School for Girls, she joined the civil service but had her career interrupted by the advent of World War 2. Assigned to the Post Office, she worked alongside her future husband, telecommunication engineer William Ashton Tait. They married in 1943 and had a son, John, by the end of the war. After the war Tait retrained as a teacher but soon returned to administrative work, arranging insurance with Lloyds, organising extra-mural exams at London University, then apprenticeships at the Master Printers Association.

When her husband, Bill, died of an occupational disease that appeared unconnected to his occupation, Nancy Tait discovered that trustworthy information on how mineral fibres affect human organisms was not an easy commodity to obtain. The experience launched her second career as an occupational and environmental health investigator and campaigner.

The award of a Churchill fellowship in 1976 allowed Tait to travel all over Europe to discuss questions of asbestos safety with international experts. In April of that year her booklet 'Asbestos kills' had come out, with support from the Silbury Fund. A year later she republished it with a new introduction and completed her fellowship with a six week visit to the United States and Canada. By then she had appeared as an expert witness before the Advisory Committee on Asbestos (the Simpson Committee), and she was serving as an expert for the environment with the EEC Economic and Social Committee Study Group on Asbestos. From spring 1978 she also served as a director of the Cancer Prevention Society, a Glasgow-based cancer pressure group set up with the backing of the Scottish TUC.

The response of the asbestos industry to the rising scrutiny of asbestos safety included an intense advertising campaign in the summer of 1976. For Nancy Tait this campaign culminated in a Turner & Newall advertisement that proclaimed: ‘You know asbestos protects—Why not say so!’, which she spotted at Euston station in 1977. Outraged by the slogan she worked to set up the Asbestos Induced Diseases Society (AIDS), launched under the name SPAID – Society for the Prevention of Asbestosis and Industrial Diseases – in the autumn of 1978. This was the first and the forerunner of a string of asbestos action groups worldwide. From 1988 SPAID ran its own electron microscope laboratory, with whose aid Tait advised special medical boards on respiratory diseases and coroners on the assessment of the presence of asbestos fibres in lung tissue. The instrument was, she stated in 1999, “the only bulwark against [certain medical experts’] efforts to secure verdicts of natural causes or open verdicts”. Tait and her organisation also provided free legal advice and supported many hundred families at inquests and benefits appeals. Beyond this, SPAID saw itself as an information service that supplied students in health & safety-related fields, concerned members of the public, welfare and medical professionals, health & safety advisors, libraries, councils, newspapers und broadcasting organisations with up to date information on virtually any occupational and environmental health threat. From 1996 the organisation operated under the name Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (OEDA), paying tribute to its wide interests.

Tait tirelessly canvassed medical opinion and lobbied MPs, union leaders and civil servants on any aspect of occupational and environmental health threats. But asbestos continued as her main concern. She made a thorough nuisance of herself to the asbestos industry and to medical experts whose judgement on asbestosis epidemiology or the interpretation of fibre counts she found questionable, and targeted journalists who trivialised the potential health impact of asbestos. In her last decade, she contributed immensely to the banning of asbestos in 1999, to revisions of the ‘Control of asbestos at work regulations’ (2002) that introduced a new duty to manage for all non domestic premises, and to the IIAC review of benefit entitlements for asbestos-related industrial injuries (2005), which promised better compensation prospects for asbestos-related lung cancer.

In 1996 Nancy Tait was awarded an MBE, followed by an honorary doctorate from the University of Southampton three years later. Her "lonely battle with extraordinary persistence and grace to bring about a Europe-wide ban on asbestos" was rewarded with an Andrew Lees Memorial Award in 2001. The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (ISOH) presented her with the Sypol Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Nancy Tait died on 13 February 2009, the day after her 89th birthday.

Archival history

Copies of content from the Turner & Newall (T&N) corporate archive, Manchester. The T&N corporate archive was accessed by the legal representatives of Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, in the course of the bank's proceedings against T&N for damages resulting from use of sprayed asbestos on the bank's headquarters in New York. OEDA received a selection of the material through the legal department of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1993 and 1994. The focus of the selection was on records of potential use specifically to British asbestos victims.

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Correspondence about the papers and Michael O'Connor's mission to distribute them, followed by Turner & Newall corporate papers relating to:

minutes of meetings

industry regulation

compensation (including all manner of case information)

health and safety measures

epidemiological research on asbestos

documentaries on the asbestos industry

company histories

The collection concludes with a single dossier on legal actions relating to the former site of Turner Asbestos Cement Co Ltd (later TAC Construction Materials Ltd) at Dalmuir.